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16 To Atul Patel at reception for influential Indians, 2009: “There’s a lot of your family in tonight.”

17 Peering at a fuse box in a Scottish factory, he said: “It looks as though it was put in by an Indian.” He later backtracked: “I meant to say cowboys.”

18 To Lockerbie residents after plane bombing, 1993: “People say after a fire it's water damage that’s the worst. We’re still drying out Windsor Castle.”

19 In Canada in 1976: “We don’t come here for our health.”

20 “I never see any home cooking – all I get is fancy stuff.” 1987

21 On the Duke of York’s house, 1986: “It looks like a tart’s bedroom.”

22 Using Hitler’s title to address German chancellor Helmut Kohl in 1997, he called him: “Reichskanzler.”

23 “We go into the red next year... I shall have to give up polo.” 1969.

24 At party in 2004: “Bugger the table plan, give me my dinner!”

25 To a woman solicitor, 1987: “I thought it was against the law for a woman to solicit.”

Prince Philip has been a long-time supporter of youth organisations (Image: jomieszkowski)

26 To a civil servant, 1970: “You’re just a silly little Whitehall twit: you don’t trust me and I don’t trust you.”

27 On the 1981 recession: “A few years ago, everybody was saying we must have more leisure, everyone’s working too much. Now everybody’s got more leisure time they’re complaining they’re unemployed. People don’t seem to make up their minds what they want.”

28 On the new £18million British Embassy in Berlin in 2000: “It’s a vast waste of space.”

29 After Dunblane massacre, 1996: “If a cricketer suddenly decided to go into a school and batter a lot of people to death with a cricket bat, are you going to ban cricket bats?”

30 To the Aircraft Research Association in 2002: “If you travel as much as we do, you appreciate the improvements in aircraft design of less noise and more comfort – provided you don’t travel in something called economy class, which sounds ghastly.”

31 On stress counselling for servicemen in 1995: “We didn’t have counsellors rushing around every time somebody let off a gun. You just got on with it!”

32 On Tom Jones, 1969: “It’s difficult to see how it’s possible to become immensely valuable by singing what are the most hideous songs.”

33 To the Scottish WI in 1961: “British women can’t cook.”

34 To then Paraguay dictator General Stroessner: “It’s a pleasure to be in a country that isn’t ruled by its people.”

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36 To Scottish driving instructor, 1995: “How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to pass the test?”

37 At a WF meeting in 1986: “If it has four legs and it’s not a chair, if it’s got two wings and it flies but is not an aeroplane and if it swims and it’s not a submarine, the Cantonese will eat it.”

38 “You ARE a woman, aren’t you?” Kenya, 1984.

39 A VIP at a local airport asked HRH: “What was your flight, like, Your Royal Highness? Philip: “Have you ever flown in a plane?” VIP: “Oh yes, sir, many times.” “Well,” said Philip, “it was just like that.”

40 On Ethiopian art, 1965: “It looks like the kind of thing my daughter would bring back from school art lessons.”

41 To a fashion writer in 1993: “You’re not wearing mink knickers,are you?”

42 To Susan Edwards and her guide dog in 2002: “They have eating dogs for the anorexic now.”

43 When offered wine in Rome in 2000, he snapped: “I don’t care what kind it is, just get me a beer!”

44 “I’d like to go to Russia very much – although the bastards murdered half my family.” 1967.

45 At City Hall in 2002: “If we could just stop the tourism, we could stop the congestion.”

The Queen and the Duke pictured in Windsor last April

46 On seeing a piezo-meter water gauge in Australia: “A pissometer?”

47“You have mosquitoes. I have the Press.” To matron of Caribbean hospital, 1966.

48 At a Bangladeshi youth club in 2002:“So who’s on drugs here?... HE looks as if he’s on drugs.”

49 To achildren’s band in Australia in 2002: “You were playing your instruments? Or do you have tape recorders under your seats?”

50 At Duke of Edinburgh Awards scheme, 2006. “Young people are the same as they always were. Just as ignorant.”

51 On how difficult it is in Britain to get rich: “What about Tom Jones? He’s made a million and he’s a bloody awful singer.”

52 To Elton John on his gold Aston Martin in 2001: “Oh, it’s you that owns that ghastly car, is it?”